Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach
In fact, anyone who has even casually followed Costello’s career should have seen this coming, not least those fans who tuned out in the mid-80s, when he began to show signs of overt sentimentality on albums like Imperial Bedroom, Punch the Clock, and Goodbye Cruel World. These “purists” thought he was better suited to carry the cynical banner of “I’m Not Angry” than the torch of “The Only Flame in Town,” but they were wearing blinders. For all his early punk posturing, Costello has always been a sucker for romantic pop. His heart’s been on his sleeve since his debut. “Alison,” his breakthrough ballad–which Linda Ronstadt saw fit to cover in 1978–could well have been written by Bacharach and his longtime lyricist Hal David. The mix of clever wordplay and heartbreaking minor chords as the singer makes a last-ditch plea to his married former lover shares a familial bond with songs like “Walk On By” and “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” Costello even performed the Bacharach/David tune “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” in concert in the late 70s.
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The two reunited at the end of the show in a mix of new and old tunes, such as the alarmingly desolate “In the Darkest Place,” from Painted From Memory, and a winning take on “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” With each encore they seemed more pleased with the way the evening had turned out–perhaps they, too, had feared that their distinct pasts would catch up with them, bogging them down in self-parody. Instead they forged a joyful synthesis between their old selves and their new ones. We should all be so lucky.
